Conflict

Conflict is a property in NetHack that causes monsters within a certain range of the hero to attack indiscriminately.

The main sources of conflict are putting on (or eating) a ring of conflict, or invoking The Sceptre of Might.

Description

While conflict is active, peaceful and tame monsters will start attacking you or other monsters near them, though for all other purposes they are still considered peaceful or tame, i.e., attacking them still carries consequences. This makes conflict dangerous near strong pets, shopkeepers, or other peaceful monsters. However, it will also make nearby monsters attack each other instead of you, which can be incredibly helpful, particularly in high-density areas like the Astral Plane and Moloch's Sanctum.

Conflict affects monsters up to 8 squares of Euclidean distance away. The monster must be able to see the hero, i.e. they are not blind or eyeless, and can see invisible if the hero is invisible. The effectiveness of conflict depends on charisma, experience level, and the target's monster level; the chance of it taking effect on a given monster move is $(CH+XL-ML)/20$, capped at ¹⁹⁄₂₀. The Wizard of Yendor resists conflict unconditionally.

If you are generating conflict when you arrive on the Astral Plane, instead of getting a guardian Angel, you will be attacked by some hostile Angels. If you are not generating conflict when you arrive, but do so later in the presence of your guardian angel, it will also turn hostile.

Monsters affected by conflict move around randomly if they have engulfed you. If used properly, this can be very helpful to a pacifist.

Strategy

Conflict is both incredibly useful and incredibly dangerous. Generating conflict is a very effective way of clearing out dense groups of enemies, since monsters will fight each other in addition to you. A common strategy is to burn Elbereth on the ground, and sit back and watch as the monsters battle it out while you take minimal damage. All monsters are prone to conflict (some may resist as explained in the formula above), including normally peaceful monsters and your pet; however, you can still incur the penalty of murder on the peaceful humans that attack you! Elbereth will continue to work against those who respect it as long as the engraving remains intact (though remember that tame and peaceful creatures ignore it!). Popular places for conflict are crowded levels such as the Big Room and certain quest branches. The elemental planes are also a good candidate for conflict, though generating conflict on the Astral Plane causes hostile Angels to replace the usual tame one.

You do not gain experience when monsters kill one another, but the monsters will gain experience for themselves. Use caution when generating conflict in the presence of monsters that tend to grow up into more powerful forms, since they can rack up experience from killing off the lesser monsters. If you are sufficiently high level, this is usually not much of a problem. Be absolutely sure to take care when generating conflict with priests or shopkeepers present—as mentioned above, they can and will attack the hero while under conflict and you will still get the usual murder penalties if you kill them.

Be careful when skipping through all of the battle messages while generating conflict, as it is easy to skip over important messages pertaining to, for example, a cockatrice hissing at you and beginning to stone you. Always pay attention to the monsters around you and any status effects that you might have gained during the flood of "The <monster> hits the <monster>!" messages.

The ring of conflict is the general item used for generating by wearing and removing the ring as necessary. The safest method of conflict, from a nutrition standpoint, is the Sceptre of Might—you won't get hungry, but you also only get to invoke it every once in a while. Thus, the Sceptre is best used for emergency crowd-clearing, such as when a spellcaster casts summon nasties. Eating a ring to get intrinsic conflict is usually a bad idea: it will burn through nutrition very quickly, and no form of intrinsic theft or other means of removing intrinsics can get rid of the property.

Players looking to utilize conflict frequently will want to forgo permanent sources of intrinsic invisibility; should you already have the intrinsic, the easiest way to remove it is to drink a cursed potion of invisibility.

History

Conflict as a property first appears with the ring of conflict in Hack 1.0.

In versions prior to NetHack 5.0.0, including variants based on those versions: conflict checks against a monster's magic resistance score using the equation rn2(100 + alev − dlev) < mtmp->data->mr, where alev is 10 for the Sceptre of Might or 5 for a ring of conflict, dlev is the monster's level (capped at 50), and mtmp->data->mr is the monster's magic resistance—for peaceful monsters, alev is always 5.

As an example of how monster resistance works in these versions, a level 28 master mind flayer pet in these versions will always resist conflict from the Sceptre of Might, as rn2(77) will always be smaller than the flayer's MR of 90. A monster does not have to see the hero for conflict to take effect: it must simply be within 8 squares of Euclidean distance from them, and must not be blind—the Wizard of Yendor is always immune to conflict.

NetHack 5.0.0 introduces the current mechanics of conflict via commit 2f255560, imported from SporkHack.

Variants

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, conflict does not function within the black market.

xNetHack

In xNetHack, as the Sceptre of Might is now the Priest quest artifact, the ability to invoke conflict is given to the new Caveman quest artifact, the Big Stick. The game also tracks "conflictless" conduct, which is broken by generating conflict.

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.